Revelations
by ArtsyChick
Summary: He had an excuse for everything. Why should his mask have been any different?


~*~*~*~

Sakura leaned over, placing her hands on her knees and letting her hair fall into her face. Sweat poured down her face and bare arms in tiny rivulets, her sleeveless red shirt clinging to her sticky skin. Lifting her green eyes upward, she looked at her sparring partner. Then she frowned.

Kakashi Hatake was standing about ten feet away from her, his dark eye going back and forth across the tiny print of his green novel. His vest, baggy blue shirt, and forehead protector lay discarded by a tree, leaving him in his loose-fitting pants and his sleeveless, nylon shirt with connected mask. Jagged, silver bangs flopped in front of his eyes, completely hiding his left one, while the rest of his hair defied the laws of gravity. But what really angered the pink-haired kunoichi was that the man didn't look the least bit tired; he hadn't even broken a sweat yet.

Sakura straightened and stood on wobbly legs. As she did, Kakashi raised his eye and watched her before carefully sliding his book back into his hip pouch. They both pulled kunai knives out of the hip pouches and the sound of clashing metal rang out.

As they fought, Sakura tried to get in a chakra-enhanced punch on her ex-sensei, but he easily dodged her fist and casually hit a pressure point on her leg, and she dropped to the ground. When she blinked, he straddled her legs and was holding her wrists behind her head, the sharp edge of his kunai millimeters away from her delicate throat. "Concede?" he asked, raising a silver eyebrow.

Sakura's jade eyes darted around, looking for an opening, but she couldn't find one. It didn't help there were three more Kakashis standing around her, prepared to attack if she _did_ happen to find an opening.

Sighing in defeat, she nodded. The Kakashis around her disappeared in puffs of smoke and Kakashi climbed off of her, pocketing his kunai. He then proceeded to dust off his clothes while Sakura dragged herself up.

"How... do you... do that?" she panted, wiping the sweat off her face with the hem of her shirt.

"Do what?" he drawled, sitting down underneath the tree by his clothes.

"Beat me! I don't... get it." Wearily, she crawled over to the tree and let her head fall against the rough bark. "I've been... training for months! And I... still can't... win." She glanced at him. "The least... you could do... is sweat a little."

Kakashi shrugged. "Give me more of a workout and we'll see. Besides, you lasted six minutes and forty-two seconds longer than yesterday. _And_ I had to tackle you and bring out Shadow Clones to make sure we didn't have a repeat of yesterday. You _are_ improving."

Sakura glared daggers at him as she smacked her ex-teacher upside his head. He groaned as she took a long drink out of her water bottle and splashed some of the icy water on her face. She then handed a white carton and a pair of disposable chopsticks to him and began eating her lunch out of her own carton.

Out of habit, she turned her body away from him and he scooted to the opposite side of the tree so as she couldn't see his face while he ate and he could eat at the rate of a normal person.

As she ate, her mind began to wander. She cocked her head and turned her face slightly. "Kakashi?" she asked, her chopsticks hovering above her carton.

"Hmm?"

She slurped some of her noodles out of her carton. "Why do you wear that mask all the time?"

"I don't. I'm not wearing it right now."

Sakura sighed. "That's _not_ what I mean. I mean, why do you wear it anyway? Are you like, extremely ugly? Like, do you have warts or fish lips or buck teeth?"

She tilted her head further and watched as Kakashi's shoulders slowly tensed. "Actually, I am _so_ handsome that the Lord Hokage ordered me to keep a mask on at all times so as not to cause any more wars."

Sakura laughed. "Yeah, right!" she snorted, covering her mouth. "And _I_ have tentacles for hands!"

"What, don't believe me?"

She almost doubled over in laughter. "Kakashi Hatake I haven't believed one of your excuses since you first told us you were six hours late to our 'training exercise' because a black cat crossed your path and you had to take the long way around."

He sighed. "I can't even get the _teacher's pet_ to respect me," he groaned, letting his head fall back against the trunk. Sakura's eyebrow twitched, and she took the square, blunt end of her chopstick and jabbed him in the thigh. He jumped, and she smiled with satisfaction.

Kakashi rubbed the spot where she'd stabbed him. "_And_ she picks on me," he grumbled.

She smiled, then tilted her head towards his voice. "I'm really serious, Kakashi," she said. "Why do you wear that mask?"

She heard him sigh again, and he set the white carton next to his legs and folded his hands in his lap. "When I was about six years old, my dad committed suicide," he began. "Disembowelment." Sakura gasped, covered her mouth with her hand. "He killed himself because he had gone on a mission, and was faced with the choice of completing the mission or saving his comrades."

"What did he do?" she murmured.

"He forfeited the mission, and chose to rescue his teammates," Kakashi continued. "However, the mission was a crucial turning point in the war that was going on at the time, and it put the Leaf Village on the receiving end of some very bad attacks. Everyone in the village hated him for it, even the people he'd saved over the mission." He sighed again, and Sakura guessed he'd tilted his head to the sky as his hair brushed roughly against the bark of their tree. "Alcoholic and depressed, he took a knife to his gut and ended his misery right on our living room floor."

"I'm so sorry," Sakura said softly, feeling tears pricking the corners of her eyes but managing to hold them back.

He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. It was almost thirty years ago."

She found her voice, and repeated her question. "So, why do you wear a mask?"

"I was ashamed of my father, because the village scorned him, and because he took the coward's way out." He fingered the cloth bunched at his neck. "I began wearing a mask because I was ashamed that I looked just like him. I decided at a very young age I wasn't going to be like him." A half-hearted chuckle escaped his lips and he leaned toward Sakura's voice. "Eventually it became habit, and I never wanted to take it off, even after I forgave my father."

"Really?" Her voice cracked.

"Yeah. Although…" He playfully prodded her leg with his chopstick, like she had done earlier. "I do like the mysterious aura that accompanies me since everyone is incredibly curious to know what I look like."

The tears fell through her eyelashes, and she reached over and punched him in the leg. He groaned as she stood up and stomped in front of him. "How can you joke about something like that?" she asked angrily, glaring into his slate-gray eye. "How can you joke about your father's death like it was _nothing_?"

"I never said…"

"Kakashi-sensei!" She squeaked and clapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn't called him 'sensei' in four years, except when she was completely exasperated with the man. She sank to her knees and let her head fall forward, thankful for the cover of her pink tresses, which hid her tears and blush. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, embarrassed at her words.

She felt a rough hand brush her hair, but she flinched away from Kakashi's touch. Sighing, he took the hand and touched her back, bringing her forward until her nose was pressed into the hard ridge of his collarbone. "I'm sorry I made you cry," he said, patting her shoulder as she shuddered in his arms. "I didn't expect the story to make you so sad."

"Well, you should've," she replied, her voice muffled by his chest.

"Sometimes I… sometimes I forget that things like that upset you." She started, but she didn't move. For some reason, she felt so… safe, wrapped in her former teacher's strong embrace. "I'm sorry, Sakura."

She wasn't angry. She could never _really_ be angry at this man. He was annoying and aggravating and constantly causing her to lose her temper, but it was always over little things, like when he ditched her at Ichiraku, forcing her to pawn off her favorite earrings to pay the bill. It only lasted a few hours, a couple days at most, but she always got over it and moved on. So, she wasn't angry.

It was just… if anything ever happened to her own parents, especially something as horrible as suicide, she wouldn't be able to handle it. Hell, if that happened, she wouldn't be able to go on living herself, let alone _joke_ about it.

After a moment, when the only sounds were a pair of birds twittering in the branches above, Sakura leaned back and wiped her eyes. "Okay, you're forgiven," she said, smiling slightly. She reached back to push her hair back when her eyes met his and her breath caught in her throat.

Kakashi's mask was still down, bunched around his neck in blue wrinkles. His bare face was there, for all the world to see.

As if stuck in a genjutsu that would burst at any moment, Sakura lifted her hand and gently brushed the bit of skin above his eyebrow. He sat quietly, as still as a statue, as she traced the line of his cheekbone with her fingertips and up over his nose. She explored the contours of his face: his nose, his cheeks, his chin, even circling back to run her finger along his silver eyebrow. Once her fingers had caressed every inch of bare skin, she trailed her fingertips back down and lightly pressed two to his mouth.

Soft, squishy, and slightly chapped, his lips gave a little when she applied more pressure. Her fingers dipped into the bow of his upper lip, and drifted beneath the lower one before passing over the thin line in the center. It was strange; how could a ninja as strong, brilliant, and intense as this man have such a plush mouth?

"You're… You're so…" The words stuck in her throat as she pulled her hand away.

Kakashi arched his brow. "Handsome?" he offered.

"No…"

"Hot? Sexy? Drop-dead gorgeous?"

She shook her head, then grinned. "_Cute_!" she squealed. He frowned. "I can't believe it!" she went on excitedly. "All this time I thought you were hiding _fish lips_ or something under there!"

Kakashi's face fell, and her girlish giggles faltered at the sight of witnessing his face actually _change_ expression. "All these years, and _still_ no respect," he sighed. "And from my favorite student too."

Sakura's heart melted at the rare compliment, but to keep up appearances she socked him in the arm.

"You know what this means, don't you?" he asked, his charcoal eye sparkling with mischief. She shook her head. "It means you're _never_ going to beat me now."

"Oh yeah?" She rolled her eyes. "It makes sense that with a pretty face like that you'd be arrogant."

"Naturally." They smirked at each other before he said, "But flattery will get you nowhere, Sakura. Your feminine wiles don't work on me."

"Why _sensei_?" she asked mockingly, standing up and stretching. "Because you're _gay_?"

She dodged the kunai aimed for her forehead and the blade buried itself three inches into the tree trunk behind her. Drawing a kunai of her own, the sound of clashing metal rang out in the forest as her knife clanged against her ex-teacher's.

"You'll pay for that Sakura!" Kakashi growled, but his right eye betrayed his tone, still twinkling brightly.

"You'll have to catch me first!" she replied, knocking the knife from his hand and taking off into the trees. He swore as the kunai slipped, accidentally slicing himself, before chasing after his only female student. Their shrieks of laughter echoed throughout the forest for the rest of the afternoon.

~*~*~*~


End file.
